


Mimsy Were the Borogoves

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [64]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Attempted Murder, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Horror, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Science Fiction, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15759708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Lily, after opening the wrong doors at the wrong time, tries to describe her experience in detention with professor Quirrell and comes short of the essence of things.





	Mimsy Were the Borogoves

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is very much NOT CANON.

In all honesty she had intended to actually show up for class. She thought this spoke well of her moral character, not that she was entirely sure what morality meant at the end of the day but it at least had to be a good sign. Particularly since it was History of Magic which usually derailed into a fist fight with the rest of the Slytherins by the time it ended.  

 

It always started out reasonably enough. Pansy would say something insulting and stupid, Draco Malfoy would be forced via politics to kind of agree with her, Nott would attempt to be a big man and take her down, and if by that point she hadn’t left already the rest of the class would turn into the equivalent of the Jerry Springer show.

 

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing though, as it was she was getting more defense action in History of Magic than she was in Defense, and occasionally she would get to lecture on various aspects of magical history that no one else believed existed. Still, she felt they were all getting a little tired of it, certainly Daphne Greengrass had taken to sitting very close to the door to avoid chairs being thrown at her head in the crossfire and the Hufflepuffs always had this traumatized look walking through the door as if the very idea of History of Magic meant violence and terror.  

 

So she hadn’t necessarily been looking forward to the class but that didn’t mean she had intended not to show up at all. Things had simply spiraled out of control at a rate that she couldn’t begin to describe.

 

At least, that was how she put it to Quirrell in her latest detention for skipping class.

 

“Mi… Miss… Miss… Po… Pott… Potter…” Quirrell attempted to stutter out getting caught on his own words like usual. She stopped listening as best she could and instead stared ahead at the office she had become far too familiar with for comfort.

 

She had always assumed Snape’s office would be creepier but Quirrell had him beat by miles. Snape’s was stark and barren without any decorations or sign of humanity, Quirrell’s was just weird. It wasn’t anything really noticeable at first, there were no oozing jars of green liquid, no stuffed heads, but the key was to stare at the book titles. It wasn’t that they were bad, no in fact most of them were standard, it was the fact that they were too standard. It was like someone had set up a stage rather than an office, like if she opened the books she’d find that they were cardboard with nothing inside, and that was always a weird feeling to have.

 

And whenever she was within five feet of Quirrell her head felt like it was on fire.

 

“How much is Snape paying you to keep doing these detention things with me?” She interrupted causing Quirrell to stop mid word and rapidly blink at her like the desperate little squirrel he was.

 

“I’m… I’m… so… sorr… sorry… Mis… Miss Potter?” He asked.

 

She was positive he was being paid off.

 

Snape had taken to assigning her an astronomical number of detentions for a multitude of reasons. One was no doubt to prove to her that she had not won in the game of who could make the other more miserable and frustrated with life. Another was that when she was in detention with Quirrell she couldn’t be doing other things which meant everything slowed down which meant that the status quo in Hogwarts remained untouched.

 

Filch was usually the one people went to for this sort of thing. The Weasley doppelgangers had frequent detentions with Filch. But Snape was craftier than McGonagall and knew that Lily could easily handle Flich. Quirrell, in his own squirrely way, was less easily dealt with and also far more irritating.

 

“Look, neither of us are going to enjoy this, at all. So why don’t we quit while we’re ahead and I leave and you stay and do whatever it is you do on weeknights.” Lily said and then motioned to Rabbit who was sitting in the other chair, “My comrade Rabbit will leave as well.”

 

“Ye… Yes… Yes… Why is… he… he… he here?” Quirrell asked looking at Rabbit in confusion.

 

“I never go anywhere without Rabbit, and every time I do something terrible happens. He also skipped class as well so… Here we are.” Snape hadn’t technically given Rabbit detention but then most of the time he tried to pretend that Rabbit didn’t actually exist.

 

“Te… Terri… Terrible?” Quirrell questioned.

 

They weren’t even ten minutes in, Lily couldn’t help but cover her face with her hand, and she wondered why Quirrell hadn’t just taken the easy way out. Granted, she could just leave, but he’d just call her back and then even if she wiped his memory she’d probably be back in for something else and when you wiped someone’s memory too many times things got a bit dicey.

 

“Yes, terrible.” Lily said throwing her hands into the air, “Do you know why I’m here professor Squirrel?”

 

“It’s Qu… Quir…Quirrell.”

 

“Whatever, I’m here because I lost Rabbit today and something terrible happened because of it.” Lily exclaimed to the ceiling, “There it is, the truth, not because I planned it, not because I meant it, but because something terrible happened.”

 

She paused here, reflecting back on the day, and truly it was great and terrible enough to merit a story even to squirrels who liked to pretend they were professors.

 

“Have you been to the seventh floor, professor Squirrel?” She didn’t wait for his response but instead continued, “Well I have. You see now that Rabbit’s an Albanian transfer student and not a rabbit it’s a bit harder to keep track of him. Sometimes he just wanders off down hallways at inconvenient times of the day. So this morning as we were walking to History of Magic I was a bit more distracted than usual and he took off so I had to take off and we somehow wound up outside this troll painting and a door appeared.”

 

It hadn’t really been that simple. She was normally not distracted enough to lose Rabbit, certainly not with the existence of Scotland at stake, but as it was the stone business had been gnawing at her. The longer she and Lenin went without results the more anxious she felt, as if his own desperation was spreading into her, what if they were stuck in this limbo period forever?

 

It was more and more tempting to just create a body for Wizard Lenin on her own. She was certain she could do it, that she could do it very well, that with a bit of research into anatomy she could make him the best damn body there ever was. The only trouble was that it was never that simple, not for things that mattered, and she could not afford a solution that brushed over small details in a way hers would. But any solution was better than no solution, or at least, that was how she felt.

 

Wizard Lenin had not been appreciative of any of this, _“I do not need your help!”_

She couldn’t always tell what Wizard Lenin was thinking or feeling but there was a large amount of wounded pride emanating from him at the thought of needing help not only from a little girl but also the same little girl who had lit him on fire and started this whole mess.

 

 _“Hey, I’m not the one who thought pointing death lasers at infants was a great idea. I clearly did not start that whole thing.”_ Lily pointed out.

 

_“Lily, just shut up and be a normal Hogwarts student for once in your life.”_

 

_“I am being a normalish Hogwarts student! I’m going to class, I’m doing my homework, and nothing’s on fire. What more could you possibly ask for?”_

 

And that was when Rabbit took off, and it was bickering with Wizard Lenin all the way to the seventh floor, and the door.  

 

Quirrell’s eyes lit up in recognition and for a moment he was perfectly still, “A door?”

 

Here she did lean close and with her most serious expression stated, “It is the door to Hell.”

 

It hadn’t looked ominous, not from the outside, it was a plain wooden door if somewhat large. In some ways the third floor corridor door had looked more important than this one. It had looked perfectly ordinary, the only things that made it distinctive were that it had appeared out of nowhere when she had turned her head, and that Rabbit had been staring at it with an intensity that was far from ordinary.

 

 _“I almost forgot about this place.”_ Wizard Lenin had commented in that nostalgic tone he always saved for Hogwarts, _“It’s extraordinarily useful.”_

 

_“What is it?”_

 

_“It’s the Room of Requirement. It turns into whatever you require it to be; within reason.”_

 

They both had stared at if for a moment and in their combined consciousness the dual thought rang out, what had they required it to be?

 

“Surely you’re exaggerating, Miss Potter.” Quirrell said leaning back in his chair casually with that cold glint in his eye as if he was assessing her. He was also sweating up a storm and judging by how much he was wincing was in a severe amount of pain but he didn’t let it show too badly.

 

If only she was.

 

She didn’t know why she had turned the handle, morbid curiosity, frustration with the situation, but she had and when she entered it was cold so terribly dark and cold. And behind her the door had slammed shut.

 

“Have you ever stared into the void that is at the edge of the universe, professor Squirrel?” Lily asked, lost in thought, thinking of that first moment where there had been emptiness stretched before her.

 

“No, I can’t say I have.” Quirrell said slowly.

 

“The trouble is, Squirrel, it stares back.”

 

Despite the fact that there had been no floor in the room her steps had echoed, she wandered forward, summoning a small pale light in her hand that did nothing to illuminate her surroundings.

 

 _“Any idea where we are?”_ Lily asked Wizard Lenin but he said nothing in response. There was no anger, no irritation, only a wordless dawning horror at the fact that he had no answer to that.

 

This, she felt, was what he had always imagined death was like when it wasn’t a train station; a great and terrible emptiness.

                                                  

She stopped and looked back to where the door should have been but it was gone, pulling at her surroundings did nothing to bring it back either, and she was left staring into the darkness where nothing moved or drifted but merely sat stagnant. It wasn’t a place you loitered and so she turned to continue walking in the emptiness wondering if she was going anywhere at all.

 

Rabbit wasn’t cooperating though, and even though he had allowed himself to be pulled in with her, his feet seemed glued to the emptiness they were standing on and he would go no further. His eyes were different, they didn’t hold expression, but there was more light in them and when they looked at her they were aware in a way they had never been before.

 

“You’re late, Lily.”

 

His voice wasn’t odd, not in the way she expected it to be, it suited him and it was hard to imagine the bell-like quality could belong to anyone else but it wasn’t blatantly inhuman. It was in fact still a child’s voice, a voice you could believe belonged to an eleven year old, and wasn’t that a terrifying thought.

 

“You speak English, this is new.” Lily noted sounding calmer than she felt because Rabbits did not speak English; it was not something they should possess the ability to do or even the inclination to do it.

 

He smiled at her slightly, a brief quirk of the lips, but it faded soon enough, “You’re late, Lily.”

 

“You didn’t speak English ten minutes ago, unless you did…”

 

“Time is thin here, I did not speak English then, I will speak English eventually, thus I speak English now. You’re late, Lily.”

 

 _“You understand that?”_ Lily asked Wizard Lenin because she only had a vague idea of what it meant.

 

 _“He sounds like a more formal version of you, so no, I don’t.”_ Wizard Lenin responded but he wasn’t really thinking about it, his mind was preoccupied on her surroundings, on the fact that they could make one claustrophobic and agoraphobic at the same time. Too large and too small in every and all instances. But she really didn’t want to think about that.

 

Rabbit was smiling politely at her, waiting for her to say or do something, and it was strange but in the dark emptiness he didn’t seem odd instead it was her that seemed out of place like she was wearing some elaborate costume called Eleanor Potter and that there was some other face under it.

 

“Well, your English is very good then.” Lily said.

 

“You’re late, Lily.”

 

Lily frowned trying not to look past his face as the dark chasm seemed to be only growing and the longer she stared at it the more she felt she would have a case of vertigo, “You keep saying that.”

 

“Because it is true. A wizard is never late nor early but arrives precisely when he means to; and yet here we are.”

 

Well it seemed Rabbit remembered Lord of the Rings well enough, even if he was quoting it in very confusing situations.

 

“Okie dokie, what exactly am I late to?”

 

“The end of all things.”

 

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that and it seemed Wizard Lenin wasn’t either. Rabbit didn’t seem alarmed by his own words and so normally she wouldn’t either but their surroundings were not exactly pleasant and it was Rabbit talking and not something normal like a person.

 

There was also something about the way he said it, the way it echoed across the dark emptiness, that made it clear that there was nothing to be said after it. Such words were not to be taken lightly.

 

 _“This is really weird, right?”_ Lily asked Wizard Lenin, maybe this always happened when he entered the super useful room or whatever.

 

_“Yes, Lily, this is weird. I think I’d like to leave.”_

 

_“Leaving sounds very good right now.”_

 

“How do I leave?” She asked abruptly with an anxiety she hadn’t ever felt before. Wizard Lenin had experienced the feeling, whenever confronted by dying or death, but she hadn’t and she didn’t like it. She also had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be so easy to just leave, if she could leave at all, and that maybe she’d be stuck in this dark place forever with Rabbit who spoke English.

 

“No one ever truly leaves the woods, Lily.” Rabbit responded.

 

“Well, there was a door, before it vanished.” Lily said standing and pacing on top of the darkness, “Where did that thing go?”

 

“Elsewhere, nowhere, everywhere.”

 

“Yeah, not super helpful Rabbit.”

 

Rabbit smiled unhelpfully. It was that polite smile again, nothing in it, and the sight of it was almost worse than the black emptiness they were in. She turned her face away from him and tried to think.

 

She could try to summon the door back, pull at its memory, but even then Rabbit was right in that it didn’t necessarily lead out. But surely somewhere was better than nowhere at all; any door was better than the end of all doors.

 

And just like that, because she required a door, it appeared.

 

It was the same door as before, unassuming, very plain and wooden looking and she was hoping it would lead back out to the hallway. The key word there was hope, because although she required it to lead back to where she came from, she also mostly required just getting out of the creepy place she was in.

 

Inside her head Wizard Lenin gave the equivalent of a stiff shrug, attempting to be casual in the face of the overwhelming void, along with the thought that Hogwarts was never even close to being this weird and terrifying when he was a student.  

 

_“And Lily, when I was a student there were petrifications and a giant spider roaming the halls.”_

 

Wizard Lenin, it seemed, was being just as useless as Rabbit but much less creepy about it. Lily grabbed Rabbit’s hand and pulled them back through the door.

 

In Quirrel’s office, a short time and long time later, Quirrell leaned in and feigned interest incredibly poorly; no doubt on the verge of a ‘that’s very nice dear’.

 

“We…Well…Well… Miss…Miss…Pot..Potter that is… exciting…” Quirrell stuttered out, his stutter had returned from vacation some time during the story and had come back in full force to make up for its blessed absence.

 

“I’m not done yet.” Lily said.

 

“No?”

 

“Nope.”

 

She thought it was over at that point as well, at the time, they were outside in the seventh floor corridor where they had started; the door behind them and Rabbit not speaking English or anything else and that was all she wanted out of life.

 

“Note to self, never ever take doorway to scary hell dimension.”

 

She was ready to put it all behind her, to go to History of Magic, but then on turning to go down the hallway she saw it or rather him. It was Wizard Lenin, well a younger Wizard Lenin, late Hogwarts aged. The odd part of the whole situation wasn’t his age though, it was the fact that he was covered in blood and staring at her with pale eyes that matched Rabbit’s in terrifying blankness.

 

Still, she supposed it was marginal success. Wizard Lenin clearly was in a body even if he was horrifically traumatized, probably due to working too hard and long on the whole stone thing, but it was a body and somehow using a hell gateway had gotten him into it which didn’t really make too much sense but neither did hell gateways.  

 

“Ah, Lenin, you okay there comrade?” She asked but he gave no response or even sign of recognition.

 

 _“Lily, that’s not me, I’m still in your head.”_ Wizard Lenin said in a quiet voice feeling just as disturbed as she was.

 

_“Wait, but if you’re still in my head then who’s…”_

 

Not Wizard Lenin appeared to regain his senses then and approached both her and Rabbit at an alarming speed opening the door back into the room and dragging them back in with him.

 

“Wait, what, no goddammit I just got out of that place!” But Not Wizard Lenin wasn’t listening and instead was throwing them inside and bolting the door behind them and warding it for good measure.

 

Luckily enough it wasn’t the hell pit she had just come from where Rabbits spoke English and there wasn’t any ground but instead what looked like a bomb shelter mixed with a hotel room. It was large complete with a fire place, a desk, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a bathroom, and everything you could ever need, including an incredibly reinforced door and absolutely no windows.

 

Not Wizard Lenin abruptly finished warding, raking a hand through his hair completely ignoring his blood-stained disheveled appearance, and began pacing and muttering to himself, “Goddamn Gamp’s law exceptions, have to figure out a way around that and fast, I wouldn’t want to get all the way in here only to starve. That’s okay, better starving than dead, starving at least gives us time…”

 

 He then appeared to remember that Rabbit and Lily existed and wheeled on his feet to look at them. He didn’t look unhappy to see them, not particularly happy either, but mostly confused as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of their presence. She was feeling much the same way because though Wizard Lenin denied it the young man was a younger Wizard Lenin. It was in their eyes, that same shade of pale blue, and more filled with that same fire and determination and sheer will to live. The force of Wizard Lenin’s charisma caused rooms he stepped into to burn, this man was the same, the human eye was drawn to him and commanded to stay. And yet something was missing in him, the age, the weariness, something was off.

 

“So, you’re covered in blood.” Lily noted shoving her hands into her pockets as she observed him, “Also I don’t think we’ve met, I mean I know someone who looks exactly like you, but apparently you’re not him…”

 

He looked down at himself, at the blood staining his Hogwarts uniform as well as his hands, and gave a small and terribly bitter laugh more reminiscent of Death than Lenin, “Yes, well, it was a blood bath down there. Tom Riddle, Slytherin prefect, although that hardly matters now.”

 

“Eleanor Potter, tenant of Slytherin and part-time messiah, and this is Lepur Rabbitson, Albanian transfer student who is also a being of terror from the outer edges of reality.”

 

He blinked, put off by the introduction, and took a second look at her those familiar eyes clearer than before, “I think I would have remembered meeting you... Well, it hardly matters now.” He threw his hands on the air and sat on the couch in an exhausted manner as if something essential had been knocked out of him. He looked worn at the edges, more so than any Hogwarts student she’d seen, and his hands were shaking.

 

Well, it hardly matters now, he said and she wondered what he meant by that. He hadn’t shown any reaction to the name Eleanor Potter, not a flinch, a smile, anything at all like it was any name at all and not Eleanor Potter.

 

She sat down in a chair facing him, leaving Rabbit to stand and stare blankly at walls. Not Wizard Lenin, Tom Riddle, didn’t look up at her, instead he remained slumped on the couch, eyes closed and chest rising shallowly making no move to clean himself up or make himself otherwise presentable.

 

“Let’s pretend I hit my head and don’t remember anything from the past ever.”

 

He startled at the words and looked over at her, probably forgetting again that she was even there, and in a voice more uncertain than she had ever heard Wizard Lenin’s asked, “What?”

 

“I have no idea what’s going on but I wanted to find a good way to say it. Can you clarify? Let’s start with the blood that seems easy.”

 

“The Germans.” He said it without expression, without any inflection, as if it was a basic fact of life. “The Germans are here.”

 

“The Germans?” Lily asked.

 

“Grindelwald’s broken through the Hogwarts wards.” Here his eyes cleared and again focused on her and a question appeared in them, “How did you two make it out?”

 

“Grindelwald?” Lily asked instead, “What year is this? 1945? Oh hell, and he invaded England too? Now I’m just confused.”

 

Grindelwald had never made it to England, his and Dumbledore’s famous duel had been in France in 1945 shortly after the muggle Germans had lost World War II. This wasn’t something she knew vaguely about, the history of Grindelwald’s campaign was cemented in her brain because of Lily Riddle and Wizard Lenin, the dates and locations of his defeat were not something she would mess up.

 

 _“Where did we require this door to lead, Lily?”_ Wizard Lenin prompted.

 

Out, she had just wanted it to go out, to go somewhere, anywhere, but where was anywhere if it was nowhere she’d ever heard of.

 

 _“Do you think he’s lying?”_ Lily asked because that would at least clear something up, maybe, or maybe it would make it all more confusing.

 

 _“No, he’s terrified. I, he, wouldn’t let anything affect him this much unless it was truly disastrous.”_ Wizard Lenin said swiftly his own mind racing as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

 

Meanwhile Tom Riddle, Not Wizard Lenin, whoever he was, was staring at her like she was some sort of an idiot and also like he himself couldn’t quite believe it had come to this, “Yes, it’s 1945 and he’s invaded England and now Hogwarts and almost everyone I know is dead.”

 

Very clear, very concise, very Wizard Lenin. Perhaps ‘Riddle’ was accurate, because it did seem like some sort of labyrinth in which she couldn’t even begin to tell right from left.

 

“Oh, well, that’s unpleasant.”

 

“Yes, yes it is.”

 

In the office she paused at this point debating whether to go on or not, thus far she’d given the highly edited version, leaving out Wizard Lenin’s existence as well as his prerevolutionary name but the essential facts were still the same.

 

Even so Quirrell looked odd hearing it, as if he was intently listening and not quite believing in the same moment, as if he knew she was leaving key elements out. Her headache was also getting worse.

 

“So…So…So… You meet… meet… meet… this…”

 

“Older very intense and driven looking Hogwarts student from 1945 who claims that Grindelwald has invaded and that he slaughtered everyone, yes.” Lily summarized pouring herself another cup of tea, the detention had been going on long enough that Quirrell had agreed to provide some, as he listened in deep confusion to her elaborate tale.

 

“And…And… And… how… how… how did you get… get… get… here?”

 

“Well, believe it or not, there’s still a lot of shit I had to go through to get to your lovely office.”

 

She didn’t know how long she stayed in the hotel bomb shelter with Rabbit and Tom Riddle as there were no clocks or windows but it was probably a few days if not a week and with each passing minute Tom Riddle went a little bit crazier. He started out alright, not the most mentally stable and covered in blood, but holding it together. However that didn’t last too long, after a long time of not sleeping, not eating, and pacing around the room thinking about how unprepared he was for a mob of dark German wizards he wasn’t holding out too well.

 

“Got to break the exception to Gamp’s law, got to break the exception to Gamp’s law, they wouldn’t leave the castle not with all the wards and the history and the sheer humiliation of taking England so can’t go back outside. Not without eating or sleeping or being prepared. I am prepared, of course I’m prepared, I’ve killed people before but this isn’t like that this isn’t easy and I’m not prepared for that. I have a horcrux though, I’ll live, but what if they don’t use the killing curse, what if they chop up my body and burn it will I still be alive then?”

 

He muttered like this, pacing back and forth in front of the door, for hours. Lily just watched him in quiet contemplation Rabbit sitting next to her and blessedly silent.

 

 _“What’s this Gamp’s law he keeps talking about?”_ Lily asked Wizard Lenin, as the paranoid and increasingly insane Tom Riddle never failed to bring it up.

 

 _“He’s actually talking about the first exception to Gamp’s Law which is food but I suppose that’s not the point.”_ Wizard Lenin was also watching the young man with both fascination and a little bit of leeriness as if not quite sure what to make of the whole situation. They both were really, it was like watching a younger version of Wizard Lenin go slowly but surely insane without any means to stop it, a vol de mort as Wizard Lenin might coin it, _“Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration states that if you can picture something in your mind thoroughly enough it can be transfigured from any substance. I’ve always had issues with Gamp’s Law though, I don’t think it’s real.”_

 

Lily looked across at the young man, _“He thinks it’s real.”_

 

 _“Yes, but he’s missing the point along with everyone else. The true issue is that something cannot be created from nothing and that transfiguration is not permanent. When a wizard transfigures an object they produce an abstract version of that object, it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, but it isn’t really a duck. It has the elements that matter but if you dig deep enough you find that it contains a lot of the same attributes as the original thing you transformed… This is all very academic and somewhat pointless. The point is when you try to make food you discover that you didn’t really make food and that if you eat it you will still starve.”_ And that was all Wizard Lenin had to say about that, which was quite a lot, considering everything.

 

They watched him pace for a few more moments both of them feeling that uneasy fascination and discomfort.

 

“I can make you food.” Lily shouted and it had the desired effect; he immediately stopped and turned to look at her.

 

“What?”

 

“This Gamp cannibalism thing you’re always muttering about, I can make food, so you don’t have to eat me and Rabbit.” He hadn’t explicitly said this but she knew he’d been thinking it from the way he’d been eyeing Rabbit who looked deceptively like easy pickings.

 

“No you can’t.” He said simply, “No one can.”

 

“Well, I am part-time wizard Jesus, remember? Water into wine, table into bread, you know, I can do it.” And she did, just for effect, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother she turned the table into a large pie and took out a slice and began to eat.

 

“You want some, it’s delicious.” Lily said waving her own slice of pie around in his face.

 

“No… That isn’t… That isn’t possible.” He rushed over to the pie, began analyzing it with his magic stick, muttering different spells and looking more alarmed and awed with each one.

 

It was funny how often she heard that phrase from Wizard Lenin and people who looked and sounded exactly like him. She still wasn’t entirely sure who this Tom Riddle character was and the really alarming thing was Wizard Lenin wasn’t either; the best they could imagine was that he was some alternate younger Wizard Lenin from a universe where Dumbledore died in France and Grindlewald marched unopposed into Britain. That or he was a robot programmed to think he was a young Wizard Lenin in those circumstances and they were really in the basement of the Department of Mysteries where his every action and reaction were being carefully monitored for future reference.

 

“Who are you?” It was the first time he asked it and really meant it.

 

“Just your friendly neighborhood Eleanor Potter.”

 

She had thought that this would solve the problem and it seemed to for a while. Food no longer was a top concern, they could stay inside the Room of Requirement as long as they wanted, and the minute they left Lily planned to go back in and try to get back to her own hallway. There were no more mutterings of starvation, of cannibalism, or anything like that but things were still weird.

 

“You see, Squirrel,” Lily said in between sips of tea her feet casually propped on Quirrell’s desk despite his stuttered protestations, “I solved the easy physical problems, like water, and food, and not being killed by scary Germans. What I didn’t realize is that being trapped in a room without any sign or hope of escape for fear of being killed by Nazis is not good for the human psyche and would drive even the most hardened person batshit crazy. I mean, I grew up in a cupboard and I turned out pretty well adjusted, but I guess I’m not your average person.”

 

“You…. You… grew… up… in… in…” And as usual Quirrell could not bring himself to finish the sentence.

 

“A cupboard, well, until I classically conditioned my relatives into giving me an actual room. That’s another story though and this one’s way more interesting, and doesn’t end with my fat cousin burning down the house.”  Lily added, besides a lot of that story had to be edited for a general audience what with Wizard Lenin and Death’s participation.

 

“Wh…What…What?”

 

Lily interrupted Quirrell’s stuttering, “Right, so back to important things, like how crazy this guy went in a very short amount of time.”

 

She hadn’t noticed it at first, because for a while he seemed fine, he would stare at her a lot as well as Rabbit and sometimes ask very odd questions but nothing too odd.

 

Wizard Lenin had been on edge though, almost from the beginning.

 

_“Lily, I think we need to leave.”_

 

They were watching Tom Riddle stare intently at a wall, as if all the laws of the universe were written upon it, he had some odd hobbies but Lily didn’t really mind so long as they left eventually. Besides she was still trying to figure out what had happened with the weird door to nowhere and then somewhere that wasn’t what she wanted.

 

And there’d been the alarming thought though, in the back of her brain, that she didn’t really have to leave. She had the stone, Wizard Lenin had the research, did it really matter if it was in one Hogwarts or in a Nazi wizard ridden one? There were things she would miss, Neville had his good moments, she would lose her chance to lose the house cup almost singlehandedly, but on the whole the more important things were right in her pocket. And in the Hogwarts destroyed by Grindelwald there was no need to go to Potions, Defense, or even History of Magic. Really, there was nothing pressing to bring her back to where she had been before. This thought was always unnerving, because there should have been something calling her back, at least that’s what she thought.

 

There was also the riddle that was Riddle, like a labyrinth, that would remain forever unsolved if she simply left it now.

 

Still, there was no rush, no immediate need to leave now and get out. Not in the way Wizard Lenin was suggesting.

 

_“We’ll leave, we just need him to get out first so we can use the goddamn door again and get it to take us somewhere useful.”_

 

There was a pause from Wizard Lenin as if he was thinking how to phrase his next words and then he said, _“I don’t think our young friend will last that long.”_

 

The image brought up by that sentence was not one she could easily picture but the closest she could think of was fragmentation, of something splintering, and the shattered pieces lost forever as they crumbled.

 

In the end Wizard Lenin was right, he didn’t last that long, he didn’t last very long at all. Because one morning when Lily woke up it wasn’t to the sight of the hotel room but instead to something that looked like a vague rip off of “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. There were red candles all around, the floor had been changed to tile, all the furniture was gone, and in the center was a giant alter with Tom Riddle shirtless and standing in the middle.

 

He looked like a shell of himself, as if the center of him what made him Tom Riddle had been torn out of him, and only the body and the dazed mind remained lingering on. And when he stared at her his eyes were flat and horribly shallow.

 

“I like what you’ve done with the place very… Culty.” Lily said but Tom Riddle didn’t respond but instead looked at her for a moment with glazed unfocused eyes. With their pale coloring though he seemed almost blind, staring into space, and it was so bizarre and unlike Wizard Lenin.

 

“I am a god.” He stated calmly, it was in that soft dangerous tone Wizard Lenin sometimes used, where shadows grew darker at the sound of it.

 

“Okie dokie…” Lily said her eyes never leaving his.

 

“You don’t believe me.” He smiled here, laughed hysterically for a few moments, “Of course, I always knew I was special, better. And then two years ago I took immortality for myself, and now, now I have summoned you.”

 

“I walked through a door from a hell dimension, you didn’t summon me.” Lily corrected but he didn’t seem interested.

 

“Oh but I did, I did, Eleanor Potter and now we are here and Grindelwald will be nothing but bones and blood at my feet and when that is done…” Here he broke off into hysterics again actually leaning over at the force of his laughter in order to catch his breath.

 

 _“Right, time to go.”_ Lily thought to herself and Wizard Lenin and grabbed Rabbit’s hand backing up towards the only door in the room.

 

“Um, that’s great, killing wizard Nazis is a great pastime but I think it’s time that Rabbit and I left and went… Somewhere else…”

 

She turned the handle behind her and instead of stepping out was met with a flood of blood rushing through the room and pushing her back inside. She should have realized she was in the “Shining” sooner it would have saved her a lot of trouble, “Goddammit what is wrong with this place!”

 

“Oh, no, you can’t leave not now. Not when we haven’t even gotten started.”

 

Something about the way he said that, and how he looked at her, made her very on edge. There were few things she found alarming because of her inability to die and high pain tolerance but there was something there that was making her sweat and wish desperately to be elsewhere. It made her think back to that moment she first met Snape, in her bedroom, where he was standing over her with a wand in his hand and his eyes gleaming.

 

They lunged for each other in the same instant, her pulling a transfigured quill out of her pocket and him with his wand in hand sounding out pseudo glitches one by one. He was very quick, more so than the Hogwarts students she kept fighting, it seemed he knew very much what he was doing and with each spell she didn’t dodge she lost a few seconds unravelling it. Every moment was spent on her toes moving away from bolts of light and watching for the next move.

 

“You’re very good at this.” He commented with a polite smile as they circled one another, “Of course you aren’t really an eleven year old girl so it hardly counts but it’s none the less impressive. I do wish I had called you sooner things were so boring before the Germans invaded.”

 

He was very chatty for someone who had to mutter Latin gibberish between every few words, “And I was so bored, I didn’t even realize it, head boy, prefect, Lord Voldemort…” Here he laughed again as he pointed the wand and prevented her lunge to the side, “They’re so unimportant that it’s almost comical. Little distractions used to convince myself that I wasn’t bored out of my mind. But why wait? Why plan the plan at all? Why not just simply do?”

 

In the meantime Wizard Lenin was offering advice into her mind’s ear intently watching the other’s moves, _“He’s going to strike hard and fast, he’s not going to waste time with shields and that will be his weakness against you. All you need to do is concentrate, don’t bother breaking his fingers he’ll keep hold of the wand anyway, go for something more vital.”_

 

She didn’t think he was trying to kill her, she had yet to see anything green, but at the same time the spells he was casting did not appear to be a healthy color and that glint in his eyes was more than a little crazed. She didn’t know exactly what it was she was afraid of but it was enough to keep her moving and ducking each time he waved the wand.

 

“Of course you don’t know any of this, I’ve never talked to you about my plans have I? Of course why would I? We’re practically strangers, Eleanor Potter part time messiah and breaker of the laws of reality. That and I don’t think I’ve ever even spoken word with your white haired little friend.” Here he cast a spell at Rabbit who had been watching the whole affair and suddenly Rabbit was tied up in black ropes and being stretched apart.

 

“Seriously, don’t mess with Rabbit, bad idea.” Lily said abruptly holding up her hands and stopping in their little dance.

 

“And why’s that?” He said cocking his head and observing her.

 

“Last time I did something negative to him magically he became a pillar of fire; it’s just a very bad idea.” Lily said waving a hand to remove the bindings and dumping Rabbit on the floor not that crazy Tom Riddle appeared to understand but at least it would prevent something terrible from happening.

 

And perhaps it was because she said it, and the fact that she had meant it, but that green light she had been looking for finally came out of the wand only to hit the still form of Rabbit curled on the floor. Riddle didn’t even have a chance to blink before the green light rebounded and hit him in the face and unlike Rabbit, Riddle did not sit back up.

 

“Well, I guess that solves that problem. Good job Rabbit, that was actually pretty helpful.” Lily said but Rabbit was too busy blinking and staring at Tom Riddle’s corpse to do anything.

 

There was something so terribly quiet though about the place, standing covered in blood, staring at the center of the room where Wizard Lenin’s doppelganger was staring blank eyed back at her. It felt as if something was left unfinished, as if there should have been more to say, more to ask after all she had never even known what he intended. Something cold creeped into her stomach and all of the sudden she didn’t want to look at it or even think about it anymore.

 

“Let’s get out of here before something else really weird happens.”  

 

She picked Rabbit up off the floor, ignoring the fact that they were both drenched in blood, and made her way to the door turning the handle requiring out. And just like that she was back where she had started, back in the void.

 

“You’re late, Lily.”

 

Lily stared down into her tea cup in Quirrell’s office, staring at her reflection, the same face she had worn going into the room as if the room had not even existed. She liked to think that her eyes were darker than they had been though, that the abyss stared out of her eyes as it did Rabbit’s, and that if you looked carefully enough you could see how far it stretched.

 

“It’s funny, I’ve never really understood the concept of fear before. I dislike the thought of cupboards, of infinite boredom, of loneliness, but I’m not afraid of them. I worry about Rabbit and what he might do but I’m not even afraid of that. Fear is… It’s crippling, it’s not something you can overcome with bravery, or valor, or anything else. There’s no reasoning with it; it just is.” She smiled at her own reflection before looking across at Quirrell, “I never realized I had the capacity to be afraid before.”

 

He didn’t say anything, which was probably best as it would no doubt ruin the mood, but she thought for a moment that there was some spark of understanding in his eyes.

 

“I’m late! I’m late! How can I be late when I’m already here?!” Lily asked Rabbit wondering if she sounded anything like crazy Tom Riddle cracking at the seams.

 

“Time is thin here. A wizard is never late nor early but arrives precisely…”

 

She cut Rabbit off, “When he means to, yes I know, you’re repeating yourself!”

 

Rabbit smiled thinly over at her, politely, and the only reassurance was that there was no pity in it only a thinly veiled tolerance and etiquette as if he had been taught to smile through these situations, “You’re late, Lily.”

 

“To the end of all things?!”

 

“Precisely.”

 

And that was when she realized it, staring across at Rabbit, at that too polite inhuman smile and the very thought of it drained all the anger and desperation from her. Her hands fell to her sides and she stared past Rabbit into the great abyss.

 

“I’m in a glitch.” She said softly, and she was, reality had ceased to exist momentarily. She had stepped through the doorway and it had flickered, and she was in the flicker, “I’m inside of a glitch. It really is breaking.”

 

She stepped forward, her footsteps echoing again, but she didn’t listen and instead blinked wondering if her surroundings might change somehow but they did not. She had always known, but it had been different then, she hadn’t really known she had just thought it.

 

“This is the end.” She said and the words were like stones in the pit of her stomach.

 

Inside Quirrell’s office Lily reached the end of her tale, “It took a couple tries but eventually I found the door that lead back here and by that time I was already late to History of Magic and Pansy Parkinson narked on me to Snape and here we are. And the funny thing is that Snape thinks that this, detention with you, is somehow comparable to that. Like this is anything more than a minor annoyance in my life.”

 

She handed the tea cup back to Quirrell and stared at the clock, it seemed it was time to leave, “Well, I think that’s all the time we have for detention today. It’s been great hearing you stutter as always, and the scent of garlic, and the overpowering migraine I have in your presence and I will see you no doubt very soon.”

 

It was just as she and Rabbit were about to exit the door that Quirrell’s voice rang out.

 

“Miss Potter?” She turned and look back at him with questioning eyebrows, “Did he say anything, before he died?”

 

He looked oddly intent, interested, and she gave him a small smile that was more bitter than kind, “Sometimes we don’t get last words, Quirrell, sometimes there’s only the green light.”

**Author's Note:**

> Someone once asked for an Alice and Wonderland type spiel where Lily follows Rabbit into the Room of Requirement and ends up god only knows where. I really like this one personally.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


End file.
